A National Water Quality Database for Industry, Regulatory Agencies, and Mining Stakeholders

Limited mining and environmental data are currently shared across the mining industry and within the mining stakeholders. The sharing of data, knowledge, and expertise has been identified as one of the new strategies that mining companies will need to embrace to become more competitive in the future (IBM 2009).

The Environmental Stewardship Initiative of the Canada Mining Innovation Council is undertaking project development work for a national water quality database intended to enhance access to key water quality data for industry members, the regulatory agencies, mining communities, and mining stakeholders at large. Currently, millions of dollars are spent on environmental water quality monitoring and most of the data are not generally available.

The ability to preserve data as projects progress through multiple owners will improve, and data loss can be minimized and the duplication of efforts can be reduced. More robust baselines can be established, so enabling a better understanding of past, current, and future mine impacts.

Proximal sites will benefit, as patterns and relationships in the data can be applied across similar mining activities and / or site conditions. Access to the data will enable environmental managers and practitioners to identify trends, patterns, and relationships. A better understanding of water chemistry may be available, which can be used for tailoring solutions to a variety of mining, processing, and environmental management activities. In general, the database concept will be similar to the geological database that is available across Canada.